another deep wedge in public confidence: in the Johnson administration's official version of the Kennedy assassination embodied in the report of the Warren Commission. Everything began on February 18 when the district attorney of New Orleans said that he had been conducting an investigation into the Kennedy case and expected to make arrests in the near future.
“On February eal Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana said that he was convinced that District Attorney James Garrison of New Orleans has "some information the Warren Commission didn't have" about a possible conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. Long.told an informal news conference that he had discussed the ‘possibility of a conspiracy with Garrison on a plane trip last October. ;
On February 22 David W. Ferrie, a former airlines pilot who figured in District Attorney James Garrison's assassination inquiry, was found dead in his bed. The coroner decided that the death was from natural causes, but Garrison thinks it was probably °* a suicide because of the existence of what appears to be a suicide note near Ferrie's body.
; According to the Februrary 23 New York Times, Ferrie had recently complained that Garrison had him "pegged as the get-away pilot in an elaborate plot to. kill Kennedy." ; .
At a February 22 news conference Garrison said:
"The apparent suicide of David Ferrie ends the life of a man who, in my judgment, was one of history's most important individuals. Evidence developed by our office had long since confirmed that'he was involved: in events culminating | in the assassination of President Kennedy. "
On February 23 Garrison was reported to have said, “"T have no reason to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed anyone in Dallas. This is my ‘personal feeling." Garrison did not elaborate on this theme.
The February 23 New York World Journal Tribune carried the. following report from Pensacola, Florida: .
"Authorities are investigating the death of a Florida man two years ago at the request of his brother who said he wanted a fresh probe because of the current investigation in New Orleans of the Kennedy assassination.
"The brother, Eari Killam, said the dead man, Thomas Henry Killam, told him he fled Dallas in December 1963, because he was being harassed by ‘agents.' Killam said his brother didn't specify whether the agents were federal, state or. some other type.
"'I'm a.dead many‘ Killam quoted his brother as saying. ‘I've run as far as I'm going to. run." —
"Wanda Killam, the dead man's wife, reached yesterday in Dallas by the Pensacola News~Journal, .said her husband had been questioned several times about the assassination py federal agents. (Wanda Killam had’ been employed for’ several years as a. hostess ina night club in Dallas owned by Jack” Ruby. ]
"Killam died beside a broken shop window on a Pensacola street March 19, 1964. His throat had been slashed. woe So “
The February 23 New York Times reported:
"Earl Killam asked the [Pensacola] solicitor today (February 22] to exhume his brother's body to find out more about the death, which the police listed as an apparent suicide. 'Did you ever hear of a man committing suicide by jumping through’a plate glass window?' the brother asked."
On February 26 the New York Times reported:
"Te death this week of a former airline pilot left District Attorney Jim Garrison, who says he has detected a 'conspiracy' that culminated in the assassination of President Kennedy, with an investigation centered almost entirely on Cuban refugees.
“This was learned here from a source within Mr. Garrison's office and bolstered by what is known publicly about the 'witnesses' Mr. Garrison and his staff are seeking.
"The District Attorney's investigators are combing Cuban refugee communities in the United States, and especially. Miami. They. are searching for persons who can shed light on what Mr. Garrison thinks was a plot to kill Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba that turned into a plot to assassinate “President Kennedy. "
A pit further on the story continues:
"The District Attorney believes, according to one.of his investigators, that Oswald. might have distributed the [pro-Castro] literature in’ an effort to win: the confidence of the. Cuban Government and gain permission to enter that country. :
"Once in Cuba, Mr. Garrison's. theory goes, Oswald would have’ become the ‘trigger man' in the plot to assassinate Premier Castro.
"However , when Oswald was denied permission to enter Cuba, the: theory continues, the anti-Castro 'conspirators' decided next to use him to assassinate President Kennedy as a way of punishing him for his ‘failure’ to follow up the Bay of Pigs invasion with: a second military effort.'"
New. developments in the assassination case are now continually being reported. Their effect is the further eroding of public confidence in the Johnson administration and the agencies of the federal government and the further widening of ‘the so-called | "credibility gap" created by the continual new exposures of governmental deception ‘in such instances as the United States' Vietnam war policy and the underhanded and. antidemocratic operations of the CIA.